Refresher Course

With yesterday's rain comes the traditional "first ride" of my mountain bike season. In some colder places people may feel their mountain bike season starts after snow melt in the spring, but for me it's when the first rain falls.

I celebrated by putting a new tire on the back of the Timberjack. The old one was pretty torn up.

I rolled out of the house and on the very first climb I encountered a small stream of water the whole way up. It rained pretty hard yesterday.

For the most part that was the only wet area. I rode up to Granite Bay and explored the trails to the north. I don't know these well yet. It's a maze of trails with no real route anyone seems to follow, so every time I wander around, get lost, and eventually pop out somewhere I recognize. You can see I hit a few dead ends:

It's hard to see them all because of the trees, but the satellite view shows the spider web of trails:

The normal route I have been doing for years is pretty fast with just a few technical features. This northern area is the opposite with lots of turns, punchy climbs, steep downhills and granite boulders and slabs. Fun stuff.

After exploring for a while, I finished the ride on the trails I am familiar with. They were damp, grippy and fast.

I ended up with 26 miles and 2500 feet of climbing on the day, a great way to start the fall.

Later.

Ashes in the Fall

Every year our long, hot summer winds down ever so slowly before abruptly terminating. The blazes that raged throughout the fire season slow to a simmer before finally snuffing out. Ashes settle from sky to Earth, starting their circle over again, waiting to one day live again. Some will merely feed the weeds. A lucky few will become one again with mighty trees.

For cyclists living in the Sacramento valley, fall can't come soon enough. It's the one season that offers perfect riding conditions, especially after the first rain. Unfortunately, our fall doesn't last long.

The summer can be great, but you have to make adjustments. Lazy mornings reading the news and sipping coffee are not on the program. You have to get out early to avoid dying in the heat. An extra water bottle and lots of sunscreen are mandatory for me.

On the mountain bike the trails are dusty and parched, often beaten and loose from a long summer parade of knobby tires. My chain rarely makes it through a whole ride before it's bone dry and begging for lube.

Then it ends. On the 19th, just four short days ago, the temperature hit 93 degrees. Yesterday the temperature plummeted to 68 degrees, and the today we received an inch of rain. Just like that, summer is over.

Tomorrow I am going to sip some morning coffee, take my time, and relish riding in cooler temperatures on damp, grippy trails.

Later.

Shifting Priorities

Lots of stuff going on. New appliances showing up. Passports that needed to be renewed. Daily bike rides. Weight lifting. Losing my checkbook and having to get new bank account numbers. Fixing numerous electronic fund transfers with the new account number. Errands. Shopping. Cooking meals. You know, life stuff.

My modest goal for the weekend was to get the shifting set up. Mission accomplished.

As I mentioned before, everything is Eagle GX except the cassette. Because these are older Deore XT hubs, I had to go NX for the cassette because of the HG cassette body.

I have been a Shimano guy for decades, which means there are numerous wheels floating around on my bikes with HG cassette bodies. I prefer Shimano, and I would have been cool with using XT 11-speed forever, but Shimano is making it tougher to get now. When Shimano moved to Micro Spline cassette bodies for their 12-speed offerings, that kind of sealed their fate. Ironically I moved to SRAM because I have so many Shimano wheels and they at least provide a pathway to 12-speed while still use HG bodies.

Nothing earth shattering about the GX Eagle setup save for a couple new wrinkles introduced by full suspension. The chain length needed to be calculated when the chainstays are longest, which for this bike (and most others) is when the shock is fully compressed. The B gap needs to be adjusted at sag. This is really a two-person job, so with all the air out of the shock I estimated sag. Close enough.

The routing on my aluminum Salsa Timberjack really soured me on internal cable routing. Wide open spaces that you had to fish around in and sharp edges on the entries and exits made it difficult. In the end my cables look like a cat chewed on them.

The routing on the Hightower is fully tunneled and easy. Mark one in the "pro" column for carbon fiber on this one.

Hopefully I get out there again this week and finish this damn thing up.

Later.

Shaping Up

 A little closer. But not much. Time is at a premium it seems.

Now comes the task of feeding various cables through holes, which I absolutely abhor. It looks like Santa Cruz did a good job with this, but we will see.

Later.

Hanging

 I finally hung a few parts in the Hightower today. Easy stuff, though.

It gets a little harder from here.

Later.

Rolling

 I found the time to get the wheelset together for my Hightower.

The wheels feature the same Deore XT hubs and ARC35 rims that I have been using successfully for many years. This particular set was built about seven years ago for a Kona Honzo build that I never started. They have been sitting in my office unused ever since. In fact, they are so old that the rear rim is the Easton version that predates the Race Face acquisition.

The tires are obviously Maxxis. The front is a new 29x2.6 Rekon. I could probably use a more aggressive tire up front, but I had three of these sitting in a box, so I'll see how they are. In the rear is a lightly used 29x2.4 Ardent. Again, I have two of these so they need to be used on something.

Unlike the WTB tires that I set up a couple months ago, which were frustratingly difficult to seat, these seated easily with a floor pump as Maxxis tires generally do for me.

Rotors are lightly used 180mm Deore XT front and rear. I should probably have a 203mm in front, but these are what I had in the archives.

The cassette is a basic Eagle NX 11-50 to eventually pair up with an otherwise GX drivetrain.

Hopefully tomorrow I can start hanging some parts on the frame.

Later.

Explicit Lyrikal Content

I will be running a 150mm Lyrik on my Hightower. Here she is naked and unashamed.

I am running a 130mm Pike on my hardtail, the most travel I have ever had. To me that fork felt bottomless when I first ran it. This will undoubtedly feel more so.

Even though this fork only features 20mm more travel, it's bigger. It seems massive in comparison to anything else I have used.

The parts for this bike build continue to trickle in.

Later.

Hightower

 A Hightower showed up at my door:

RIP Bubba Smith.

No, not that one. This one:

I haven't owned a full suspension bike since 2003, the last of which was a Santa Cruz Blur. I hated that bike, and swore off full suspension forever, but I must admit now in hindsight that I didn't really set it up for success.

I had only been on a hardtail for a few years, and still often chose to ride with a rigid fork. I was racing road bikes and cyclocross, in addition to mountain bikes, and my bike setup might have reflected that racing mentality.

My zero degree stem was way too long and the narrow bars too flat. I had a terrible habit of slamming my stem right on top of the headset (because racer!). I was also on a large frame, which had a ridiculously tall 21" seat tube back then. (My large now is only 17 inches.) It all added up to a really funky handling bike.

Looking at it now I can imagine that a little more steerer tube, a shorter stem and more rise on the bars would have done wonders to make it handle better.

Fast forward 20 years and I am now 56 years old. I can still ride a hardtail, sure, and that practice will likely continue. However, I do notice some soreness the next day. It's time to mix in a little comfort. And fun, of course.

I have also learned a tremendous amount about bike setup and positioning. Being comfortable can actually make you faster. Who knew!

Later.